Back Aa

Unvarnished Tales

Close

<h2>XX. THE DEVIL’S PLAYTHINGS.</h2> On the first day of April in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five the following advertisement appeared in the Times newspaper. <blockquote>“Housemaid and Companion.—Wanted immediately a smart active young woman, who thoroughly understands her business: a small house, and only one in family: washing given out: must have first-class references; good wages given; send copies of discharges to Mrs. G., Lambird Cottage, Thornton Heath.” </blockquote> The “Mrs. G.” who advertised in these terms was a widow lady, named Gillison, and among those who applied for the situation was Susan Copeland, of the village of Stockbury in the county of Kent.  How a copy of the Times happened to arrive in Stockbury, does not appear upon the evidence.  But in all probability it had been sent to the Vicar, and the wife of that worthy clergyman, who had an insatiable thirst for the knowledge that is to be obtained from advertisements, came upon this “Want” of Mrs. Gillison, and brought it before the notice of Susan Copeland.  Susan was the model villager, the prize-girl of Stockbury, and having served brilliantly as an under nurse to the Vicar’s family, she was now anxious, as the saying goes, “to better herself.”  Susan was a tall brown-eyed girl.  She affected great simplicity in her dress, wore her hair brushed flat down on her forehead, and in a general way looked more like a Puritan maiden than is customary with the daughters of Kentish farmers.  Susan was eighteen years of age, and was engaged to Thomas Ash.  As Susan Copeland was the model girl of Stockbury, it was only right that she should become engaged to the model young man.  And that young man was Tom.  He had secured all the prizes in the Boys’ department, while she had been sedulously engaged in acquiring all the honours from the Girls’.  Indeed, these two swooped down upon the prize list, and by reason of their superior attainments and conspicuous virtue swept off all before them. Satisfied with the Vicar’s report, Mrs. Gillison of Thornton Heath engaged Susan in the real and somewhat unusual capacity of “Housemaid and Companion” at a yearly salary of £20, which to a Stockbury girl appeared a tolerable fortune.  And it was arranged that Thomas Ash should take his betrothed to London, and deliver her safely at the house of Mrs. Gillison.  There was much sorrow in the village of Stockbury, when Susan took her departure for the great metropolis, and her boxes contained many tokens of the affectionate esteem in which she was held by her contemporaries.  All thoughts of rivalry were now lost in a universal sentiment of sorrow.  It was felt that in losing Miss Copeland, Stockbury was robbed of much of its moral lustre.  It is not necessary to enumerate the presents which her friends forced upon her.  Most of them had taken the shape of literature, and ranged from the “Dairyman’s Daughter” to the hymnal of the inimitable Watts; from “Baxter’s Saints’ Rest” presented by the Vicar to a highly coloured history of Jack and the Beanstalk, the gift of a small brother.  So beloved, respected, and lamented, Susan left her native village proudly escorted by the man who hereafter was to lead her to the altar. Mrs. Gillison, when she had duly inspected, cross-examined, and examined-in-chief her new “housemaid and companion,” professed herself entirely satisfied; and Susan, who had a fine literary taste of her own, was delighted to find that her duties would be very light and that she would have the coveted leisure in which to improve her mind.  Mrs. Gillison was an active, smart little woman, who did her own cooking.  There was, moreover, a boy kept on the premises to carry coal, clean boots, and perform other menial offices.  Indeed, Susan’s duties were, in the first place, to keep clean the few rooms, of which Lambird Cottage consisted, and to afford to Mrs. Gillison that companionship which is found desirable by widow ladies of a certain age.  Mrs. Gillison was not a lady of much education—her husband had been a pork butcher in the Walworth Road—and it was part of p. 190Susan’s duty to read to her in the evening the entertaining fictions which she purchased when she took her walks abroad.  The old lady was omniverous, but chiefly relished the stirring fictions compiled by the Penny Dreadful authors, and at times had appetite for such boy’s literature as dealt with pirates or robbers, or the wild Indians of the West.  Dickens she rated “a low feller,” but she revelled in Ouida, and was particularly partial to the earlier fictions of Bulwer Lytton.  Susan Copeland’s excursions into the field of fiction had hitherto gone no further than “Ministering Children,” and other books with a religious purpose.  Her mind, therefore, became greatly expanded while reading for her mistress, and she became possessed of many views of life, which were to her at once strange and stimulating. When Susan had been three months with the widow of the pork butcher her mistress handed her five golden sovereigns, that being the amount of wages then due, and Susan went out to the contiguous village of Croydon to purchase a new bonnet.  She had never before purchased a head-dress so fashionable.  Her tastes, however, had improved since she left the little village of Stockbury, and she wanted a bonnet which would suit the new style of doing her hair; for, with the consent of her mistress, she no longer wore her hair brushed flat down on the forehead like a Puritan, but adopted the fashionable “fringe” just then, to the eternal shame of English womanhood, coming into vogue.  A “housemaid and companion” is a more privileged person than a housemaid, or a companion, and when Susan returned from Croydon with her purchase she walked into Mrs. Gillison’s sitting-room without knocking at the door.  Mrs. Gillison was sitting at the table and started when her servant entered—started, then grew pale, then grew red, and then looked down with a shamefaced expression, more like that of a peccant school-girl than that of a grown woman.  On the table before her lay a pack of cards with their faces exposed.  Mrs. Gillison had, in fact, been discovered in the act of playing “Patience.”  It would be ridiculous to assert that the mere act of engaging in this very monotonous and even foolish pursuit is wicked in itself, and should occasion a blush on the cheek of matured innocence.  But Susan Copeland had been brought up to consider cards the devil’s plaything, and Mrs. Gillison had often heard her express her opinions on the subject, when she happened upon an allusion to the card-table in any of the novels which she read.  Indeed, so great was the confusion of the widow at being discovered in the midst of an occupation which that model Sunday scholar regarded with honest and hearty aversion that not only did she blush, she added to her sin by uttering a deliberate falsehood. “I—I—was only tellin’ my fortune,” she said in an apologetic tone. But in the countenance of her maid she saw pictured neither aversion nor reproach, but only awakened interest and active curiosity.  She took up a King and an Ace, regarded them carefully, and then said slowly,— “And so these are real cards?” Much relieved her mistress answered,— “Of course.  There ain’t much harm in ’em, is there?” “Not to look at,” replied the cautious handmaiden.  “But I suppose the wickedness is in playing with them.” p. 193“Not a bit.  There never was a better man than my husband, and me an’ him played cribbage every night of our lives.” Susan never took her eyes off the King and Ace which she still held.  She was fascinated.  She had even forgotten about her new bonnet.  She said in a dreamy, half-conscious sort of way,— “I believe it must be in the playing the wickedness is.  I would like to see what it is.  Will you show me—so that I may avoid it?” Never in her life did Mrs. Gillison comply more willingly with a request. “Of course, my dear, of course.  Sit down opposite me there.  Pick ’em all up.  That’s right.  Now hand ’em to me.  This is the way we shuffle.  D’ye see?  And that’s the way we cut.  There’s no harm in that, is there?  Now run an’ fetch the cribbage board off my chest of drawers.  It’s a long board with ivory in it, an’ a lot of little holes at the side.  Run along.” In another half hour Susan had begun to master the intricacies of the game, and was pegging away with an ardour which astonished even Mrs. Gillison, who was delighted at this new departure.  The last words she said to herself as she turned into bed were,— “What a treasure that girl is to be sure!” Strange to relate the following evening found Mrs. Gillison and Susan Copeland sitting at the same table with the same cribbage board between them, evincing the same determined interest in the game.  Susan had quite made up her mind that she had not yet arrived at the sinful phase of card playing. “I suppose,” she ventured on this occasion, “that the sin of it is when you play for money.” “I don’t see no sin in playin’ for money.  Me an’ my husband always played sixpence a game.” “Suppose—suppose,” said Susan, doubtfully, “that we try—just to see.” Mrs. Gillison was delighted.  She was at heart as determined a gambler as ever punted at Monaco.  She had now discovered in her Paragon the only virtue in which she had considered her wanting.  So they continued their game—only playing for sixpences.  When Mrs. Gillison retired that night her last observation was,— p. 195“’Ow that gurl do improve in her card playin’ to be sure.” And indeed Mrs. Gillison did not do her protégée more than justice.  She did improve with rapid strides.  The same faculty which enabled her to take away the village school prizes from all comers, now gave her the power of acquiring the mysteries of the pack.  In time she began to consider cribbage a somewhat slow amusement, and her mistress, nothing loath, undertook to open up for her the beauties of écarté.  This Susan considered an altogether more agreeable pastime.  And after she had played it a week her mistress on going to bed made this remark,— “The way that gurl turns up the King is astonishin’.” It was astonishing.  In fact, Susan turned the King up with such success that at the end of twelve months her mistress owed her five hundred pounds which she could not pay.  Then it was that Susan discovered the sinfulness of cards.  It consisted in playing and not paying.  She told her mistress so, and considered that she was only doing her duty as a religious and well brought-up young woman in warning that abandoned person of the danger of giving way to habits of dishonesty.  This little monetary difficulty occasioned unpleasantness between mistress and maid.  Relations between them became strained.  Mrs. Gillison was—to use her own expression—dying for a game of cards, and Susan Copeland refused to play except for ready money.  Eventually it became so apparent that the unscrupulous old woman either would not or could not pay what she had lost, that Susan in the defence of her just rights was obliged to call in her legal adviser. Thomas Ash, still true to his Susan, and pining at a separation so lengthened, had obtained a situation in the London police, and although he had not succeeded in getting put upon the Thornton Heath district he felt that he was near his sweetheart, and could occasionally have an interview with her when off duty.  One evening Susan told her mistress that her friend had called, and the old lady, now looking worn and faded, followed her maid to the kitchen, where, to her great surprise and terror, she beheld a policeman of formidable size and severe aspect.  She burst out crying and begged Susan to spare her—not to arrest her and she would pay all—she would indeed.  Thomas Ash reassured the lady, informing her that he was present in his private capacity to advise, not in his public capacity to arrest.  He was present to assist, not to alarm.  The advice which he gave was simple and direct.  He advised her to sell her house and furniture, and so settle Susan’s demand.  The defaulting gambler at first refused, but Thomas Ash put the heinousness of her crime in such a very strong light that she at last consented, and Lambird Cottage with its contents became the property of strangers. Ash left the police and took a beer house called the “Spotted Cow,” and in due course married Susan.  They are greatly respected by their customers, and have shown unexampled kindness to the wretched woman, who tried to rob the gentle Susan.  They have, for a consideration paid quarterly, given Mrs. Gillison a home, and she endeavours to prove her gratitude by doing all the kitchen work, mending the socks of the only child, and preparing the linen, for another which is p. 198daily expected.  Sometimes Susan will lend her six pennies of an evening with which to play cribbage, and they play quite happily till the Paragon has won the pennies all back again. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2